Tuesday, 29 October 2013

When Sarjapur was a Jagir

It is the emerging IT and
real estate hub of Bangalore.
Once known as a small village coming in Anekal taluk, it was a forgotten
outpost of history till a decade ago.

Today, this village boasts of
hosting several IT majors and it has been seeing a booming real estate market,
all thanks to the innumerable IT and BT companies that dot the place.

Located south east of Bangalore, it is now
being spoken of as the place where WIPRO is housing its world class university
and Infosys is setting up a special economic zone (SEZ).

The SEZ and university makes good
sense as this area is well connected to other IT hotspots such as Whitefield, ElectronicCity, Bommanahalli, Bommasandra,
Marathahalli, Silk Board Junction, Anekal, Koramangala, Madiwala and Outer Ring
Road.

This is Sarjapur, which was
once a sleepy village. It is emerging as a fast growing IT hub and the Aziz
Premji Foundation plans to acquire 50 acres here to set up a university.
Similarly, Infosys has purchased 202 acres to set up a SEZ exclusively for IT.

Though Sarjapur is seeing
a boom now, very few know that it was once a jagir granted by the Mughals and
that this Jagirship continued for more than
a century.

Sarjapur till 1873 was also the
headquarters of the taluk by the same name. Sarjapur, till the beginning of the
21st century, was mostly rural in character and it was a place where a fair or
jatre was held every Sunday.

The fair was popular and
people from Sarjapur and surrounding villages and even Anekal came here to buy
and sell goods. The fair gave an opportunity to local farmers and growers to display
and sell their commodities and small time traders to sell their goods.

The fair disappeared once
Sarjapur was swallowed by in the throes of urbanisation. However, the conduct
of the fair can be gauged if one were to visit the Madivala fair which is held
even today.

Coming back to Sarjapur, it was a small trading centre and its importance
lay in the fact that it bordered Bangalore
on one side eighteen villages on the other three sides.

Sarjapur had access to all
these eighteens villages and obviously it was the biggest of them all in
population.

Sarjapur was known for the
manufacture of cotton, clothes, carpets and tapes. Muslins of the finest quality
were woven here and sold in Bangalore
and other places. The Sarjapur Muslin was well-known in and around Bangalore and it was in
great demand.

The Sarjapur products were
sold in the petes of Bangalore
and the Muslin competed with similar products from Doddaballapur. If
Doddaballapur was known for sarees, Sarjapur was known for its clothes and
cotton. Today, neither are manufactured in Sarjapur.

Sarjapur was a jagir along
with 18 other surrounding villages. The first mention of the jagir of Sarjapur goes
back to the time of the Mughals.

The Mughals invaded Bangalore and took over the fort of Bangalore under the Mughal Emperor,
Aurangzeb, sometime in 1686. The Mughal General, Khasim Khan, wrested Bangalore and its surroundings from the Marathas and in
1689 leased Bangalore
to the Wodeyars of Mysore.

In the meantime, the Mughals appear
to have leased Sarjapur as a jagir. Their main condition was that the jagirdar
train and station troops to help the Mughal Emperor in tines of war. This condition
appears statesmanlike as the Mughals were constantly battling the Marathas all over
the Deccan (South India).

The Mughals had also brought
an end to the Adil Shahis of Bijapur in 1686 and the Qutb Shahs of Golconda in
1689. With both these Muslim Kingdoms annexed by the Mughals, the Marathas came
in direct conflict with the Mughal Emperor, Aurangzeb.

Emperor Aurangzeb realised that
the Hindu kingdom of Wodeyars was just a little more than a hundred kilometers
from Bangalore.
His General, Kasim Khan, gave away Bangalore
to the Wodeyars but kept Sira and Sarjapur as Mughal provinces. While Sira,
near Tumkur, became a regular Mughal province, Sarjapur was given as a Jagir.
However, both Sira and Sarjapur were part of the Mughal province in the south.

The jagir of Sira and also
Sarjapur was confirmed b successive rulers. While Sira finally fell to Hyder
Ali, he allowed the jagir of Sarjapur to continue. This even as Hyder Ali took Bangalore from the
Marathas.

B.L. Rice, in his gazetteer, speaks
of having seen the documents confirming and reconfirming the Sarjapur Jagir.

The first grant is in Persian
and it is by Dilawar Khan, the Mughal Subedar of Sira province. The grant is in
the name of the Mughal Emperor and the Mughal Emperor is called as Alamgir
Padshah i Ghazi.

Then comes the grant of the
jagir by Madhava Rao, a minister of the Peshwas of Pune. This grant is in Marathi. This document
bears the inscription, Raja Ram Narapati, Harsha Nishan Madhav Rao Ballal
Pradhan.

The next confirmation of the
grant is by Hyder Ali. This paper has the signature of Hyder Ali and it is also
in Marathi. It is signed as Fatte Haider. Then comes the grant by Lord
Cornwallis and it is sealed with the Persian word Salar E Inglistan. It is
initialed at the back as “GFC”.

Then comes the grant by
Captain Cherry and this too is in Persian. It says the seal is by George
Fredrick Cherry, Khayim Jang, fidvi E Kampani Angresi Bahadur.

The last grant of the jagir
is by Captain Reed in 1791 and it is in Persian. The seal says Alexander Reed Bahadur.
The grants were finally cancelled by Dewan Purnaiah when he found that the Jagardir
of Sarjapur wanted to sell the jagir.

Purnaiah bought out the
Jahagirdar, After that there was no jagir or Jahagirdar. The Sarjapur province
was merged with the MysoreKingdom and it soon lost
all its former glory and by the turn of the century it was just a small
village.

Today, Sarjapur is on another
incline. Modernisation and development is going hand in hand and the area is
seeing a boom in the real estate sector. IT and BT companies are setting shop
in Sarjapur. Connectivity to and from Sarjapur has improved by leaps and bounds.
Alas, the march of modernity has ensured that all relics of the past, barring a
few temples, have vanished without a trace. This is the price one has to pay
for growing urbanization and development.

2 comments:

Hi!I've been looking for information on Sarjapur village and the areas around for a while as its part of the local geography / history content in class 4 where i teach. your blog was very helpful!!! thank youwould it be possible for you to share any more information on the area you may have uncovered during your research pleaseregardschitra